Revisiting Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Goin’ On,” and the Album That Opened R&B to Resistance: Revisited 50 Years Later

in Life, Music, Politics | May 24th, 2021

I just want to be heard and that’s all that mat­ters. — Mar­vin Gaye

R&B super­star Mar­vin Gaye was more than will­ing to risk his career on a record.

His pol­ished pub­lic per­sona was a false front behind which lurked some seri­ous demons — depres­sion and addic­tion, exac­er­bat­ed by the ill­ness and death of his close friend and duet mate, Tam­mi Ter­rell.

His down­ward spi­ral was also fueled by his dis­tress over events of the late 60s.

How else to respond to the Viet­nam War, the mur­der of civ­il rights lead­ers, police bru­tal­i­ty, the Watts Riots, a dire envi­ron­men­tal sit­u­a­tion, and the dis­en­fran­chise­ment and aban­don­ment of low­er income Black com­mu­ni­ties?

Per­haps by refus­ing to adhere to pro­duc­er Bar­ry Gordy’s man­date that all Motown artists were to steer clear of overt polit­i­cal stances….

He con­trolled their careers, but art is a pow­er­ful out­let.

Obie Ben­son also came under Gordy’s thumb as a mem­ber of the R&B quar­tet, the Four Tops. The shock­ing vio­lence he wit­nessed in Berkeley’s Peo­ple’s Park on Bloody Thurs­day while on tour with his band pro­vid­ed the lyri­cal inspi­ra­tion for “What’s Goin’ On.”

When the oth­er mem­bers of the group refused to touch it, not want­i­ng to rock the boat with a protest song, he took it to Gaye, who had lost all enthu­si­asm for the “bull­shit” love songs that had made him a star

Ben­son recalled that Gaye added some “things that were more ghet­to, more nat­ur­al, which made it seem more like a sto­ry than a song… we mea­sured him for the suit and he tai­lored the hell out of it.”

Gordy was not pleased with the song’s mes­sage, nor his loosey goosey approach to lay­ing down the track. Eli Fontaine’s famous sax­o­phone intro was impro­vised and “Motown’s secret weapon,” bassist James Jamer­son was so plas­tered on Metaxa, he was record­ed sprawl­ing on the floor.

Jamer­son told his wife they’d been work­ing on a “mas­ter­piece,” but Gordy dubbed “What’s Going On” “the worst thing I ever heard in my life,” pooh-poohing the “Dizzy Gille­spie stuff in the mid­dle, that scat­ting.” He refused to release it.

Gaye stonewalled by going on strike, refus­ing to record any music what­so­ev­er.

Eight months in, Motown’s A&R Head Har­ry Balk, des­per­ate for anoth­er release from one of the label’s most pop­u­lar acts, direct­ed sales vice pres­i­dent Bar­ney Ales to drop the new sin­gle behind Gordy’s back.

It imme­di­ate­ly shot to the top of the charts, sell­ing 70,000 copies in its first week.

Gordy, warm­ing to the idea of more sales, abrupt­ly reversed course, direct­ing Gaye to come up with an entire album of protest songs. It ush­ered in a new era in which Black record­ing artists were not only free, but encour­aged to use their voic­es to bring about social change.

The album, What’s Going On, recent­ly claimed top hon­ors when Rolling Stone updat­ed its  500 Great­est Albums list. Now, it is cel­e­brat­ing its 50th anniver­sary, and as Poly­phon­ic, pro­duc­ers of the mini-doc above note, its sen­ti­ments couldn’t be more time­ly.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Hear Mar­vin Gaye Sing “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” A Capel­la: The Haunt­ing Iso­lat­ed Vocal Track

Nina Simone’s Live Per­for­mances of Her Poignant Civ­il Rights Protest Songs

Hear a 4 Hour Playlist of Great Protest Songs: Bob Dylan, Nina Simone, Bob Mar­ley, Pub­lic Ene­my, Bil­ly Bragg & More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her June 7 for a Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain: The Peri­od­i­cal Cica­da, a free vir­tu­al vari­ety hon­or­ing the 17-Year Cicadas of Brood X. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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A Young Janis Joplin Plays a Passionate Set at One of Her First Gigs in San Francisco (1963)

in Music | May 20th, 2021

From her ear­ly, unhap­py teen years in Port Arthur, Texas, Janis Joplin seemed to know she want­ed to be a blues singer. She once said she decid­ed to become a singer when a friend “loaned her his Bessie Smith and Lead­bel­ly records,” writes biog­ra­ph­er Ellis Amburn. “Ten years lat­er, Janis was hailed as the pre­mier blues singer of her time. She paid trib­ute to Bessie by buy­ing her a head­stone for her unmarked grave.” She was devot­ed to the blues, from her ear­li­est encoun­ters with the music in her youth to her last record­ed song, the lone­ly, a capel­la blues, “Mer­cedes Benz.”

But when Joplin first appeared on the San Fran­cis­co scene in 1963, she did so as a Dylan-influ­enced folkie fresh from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas, Austin. The year before, she had been described by a pro­file in The Dai­ly Tex­an as an artist who “goes bare­foot­ed when she feels like it, wears Levis to class because they’re more com­fort­able, and car­ries her auto­harp with her every­where she goes so that in case she gets the urge to break into song, it will be handy.” The arti­cle was titled “She Dares to Be Dif­fer­ent.”

Joplin’s folk per­sona was hard­ly unique in either San Fran­cis­co or Austin in the ear­ly 60s. “In fact, her love of Dylan and folk sim­ply marked her out as a rid­er of the zeit­geist,” writes music jour­nal­ist Chris Salewicz. “When, for exam­ple, a for­mer Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas alum­nus called Chet Helms passed through [Austin] he was aston­ished at the wealth of folk music.” Helms, who had already moved west, promised Joplin gigs in San Fran­cis­co. The pair hitch­hiked to the city “mid­way through Jan­u­ary 1963, with con­sid­er­able trep­i­da­tion… a trek in which they spent 50 hours on the road.”

Once in North Beach, a neigh­bor­hood defined by City Lights book­store and the Beats, Helms found Joplin gigs at Cof­fee and Con­fu­sion, then the Cof­fee Gallery, where she “was just one of many future rock­ers to play the Cof­fee Gallery as a folkie,” writes Alice Echols. In South Bay cof­fee­hous­es, she met Jer­ry Gar­cia and future Jef­fer­son Air­plane gui­tarist Jor­ma Kauko­nen. Every­one made the cof­fee­house rounds, acoustic gui­tar in hand. It was the way to make a name in the scene, which Janis did quick­ly, appear­ing the same year she arrived in San Fran­cis­co on the side stage at the Mon­terey Folk Fes­ti­val.

But Janis brought some­thing dif­fer­ent than oth­er stu­dents of Dylan — big­ger and bold­er and loud­er and deeply root­ed in a South­ern blues tra­di­tion Joplin spread to aston­ished beat­niks like a “Blues His­to­ri­an,” one com­menter notes, “turn­ing a small audi­ence on to some obscure and for­got­ten per­form­ers, whose music would serve as the foun­da­tion for an entire genre yet to come.” You can hear her do just that in the gig above at the Cof­fee Gallery in 1963: “no drums, no crowds. Just Janis and a small group of peo­ple gath­ered to hear some sam­ples of rur­al blues, done by an enthu­si­ast from Texas.”

See the full setlist below. Oth­er per­form­ers on the record­ing, accord­ing to the YouTube uploader, are Lar­ry Han­ks on acoustic gui­tar and vocals, and Bil­ly Roberts (or pos­si­bly Roger Perkins) on acoustic gui­tar, as well as ban­jo, vocals, and har­mon­i­ca.

Leav­ing’ This Morn­ing (K.C. Blues)
Dad­dy, Dad­dy, Dad­dy
Care­less Love
Bour­geois Blues
Black Moun­tain Blues
Gospel Ship
Stealin’

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Janis Joplin’s Last TV Per­for­mance & Inter­view: The Dick Cavett Show (1970)

Hear a Rare First Record­ing of Janis Joplin’s Hit “Me and Bob­by McGee,” Writ­ten by Kris Kristof­fer­son

Janis Joplin & Tom Jones Bring the House Down in an Unlike­ly Duet of “Raise Your Hand” (1969)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness

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One Man’s Quest to Build the Best Stereo System in the World

in Music, Technology | May 18th, 2021

To make Fitz­car­ral­do, a movie about a rub­ber baron who drags a steamship over a hill in the Peru­vian jun­gle, Wern­er Her­zog famous­ly arranged the actu­al drag­ging of an actu­al steamship over an actu­al hill in the actu­al Peru­vian jun­gle. This endeav­or ran into all the com­pli­ca­tions you’d expect and then some. But the rea­son­able ques­tion of whether it would­n’t be wis­er to cut his loss­es and head back to civ­i­liza­tion prompt­ed Her­zog to make an artis­ti­cal­ly defin­ing state­ment: “If I aban­don this project, I would be a man with­out dreams and I don’t want to live like that. I live my life or I end my life, with this project.”

Ken Fritz is a man with dreams, and the doc­u­men­tary above con­cerns one he pur­sued for near­ly 30 years: that of build­ing “the best stereo sys­tem in the world.” He set about real­iz­ing this dream in suc­cess­ful mid­dle age, the time of life when the thoughts of no few men, he acknowl­edges, turn to audio­phil­ia. But in Fritz’s case, the dri­ve that made him a busi­ness suc­cess in the first place fixed his sights per­ma­nent­ly on some­thing more than a hi-fi fit for a man cave. Indeed, it entailed build­ing some­thing down­right cav­ernous, a ver­i­ta­ble con­cert hall of an addi­tion to his house scaled to accom­mo­date cus­tom-made speak­er tow­ers and designed for the opti­mal dis­per­sion of sound with a min­i­mum of inter­fer­ence.

Much of Fritz’s sys­tem is cus­tom-made, most elab­o­rate­ly notably its three-armed, 1,500-pound “Franken­stein turntable.” How much did it cost asks his son Scott? “I’ve seen turnta­bles that sell for $100,00, $120,000, and they’re nowhere near as com­pli­cat­ed and as involved as this,” he says. (Fritz now esti­mates that he has spent north of $1 mil­lion on his rig.) But to the true audio­phile, every invest­ment is worth it, whether of mon­ey, time, or effort. For “once it’s built, if you don’t like it, if does­n’t work, you’re stuck with it. You just lie to your­self: ‘It sounds good.’ ” Fritz’s music room stands as a tes­ta­ment to his deter­mi­na­tion not to lie to him­self — as well as to his love of music and will to give that love a con­crete form.

“I just can­not go day after day with­out accom­plish­ing some­thing,” Fritz says. “They say that when you’re retired, you should­n’t have to do any­thing. I don’t buy that at all. For­tu­nate­ly, all my goals have been ful­filled. I’ve built every­thing I’ve want­ed to build.” This includes all his music room’s shelves and cab­i­nets, each per­fect­ly pro­por­tioned to the com­po­nent it con­tains. And though a diag­no­sis of amy­otroph­ic lat­er­al scle­ro­sis has brought Fritz’s wood­work­ing days to an end, it has­n’t put him off the notion that “if the mind does­n’t keep the body going, and the body does­n’t ful­fill the thoughts that a man has, he becomes sense­less. He might as well just pack it up.” Few of us will ever know the kind of sat­is­fac­tion he must feel lis­ten­ing to Swan Lake, his favorite work of clas­si­cal music, on the sound sys­tem that could fair­ly be called his life’s work. But many of us will won­der: how must “Dea­con Blues” sound on it?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch “Hi-Fi-Fo-Fum,” a Short Satir­i­cal Film About the Inven­tion of the Audio­phile (1959)

An 82-Year-Old Japan­ese Audio­phile Search­es for the Best Sound by Installing His Own Elec­tric Util­i­ty Pole in His Yard

Jimi Hendrix’s Home Audio Sys­tem & Record Col­lec­tion Gets Recre­at­ed in His Lon­don Flat

How the Grate­ful Dead’s “Wall of Sound” – a Mon­ster, 600-Speak­er Sound Sys­tem – Changed Rock Con­certs & Live Music For­ev­er

How Steely Dan Wrote “Dea­con Blues,” the Song Audio­philes Use to Test High-End Stere­os

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain’s Headbanging Cover of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit”

in Comedy, Music | May 14th, 2021

Smells Like Teen Spir­it is an unusu­al anthem because it refus­es the role of the anthem. It’s per­fect for the gen­er­a­tion it rep­re­sent­ed because this was a cohort that was so ambiva­lent about any tra­di­tion­al val­ues [or] con­ven­tion­al suc­cess. — music crit­ic Ann Pow­ers 

The scream­ing exis­ten­tial angst of “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” ensured that Nir­vana would define, tran­scend, and out­last the 90s grunge scene.

The song was an instant hit. Here’s a descrip­tion from some­one who was present at the small Seat­tle club O.K Hotel for its first live per­for­mance:

They start­ed play­ing the new song and peo­ple erupt­ed. We were being slimed on by shirt­less guys, just mosh­ing. My friend Susan start­ed hyper­ven­ti­lat­ing, she thought it was so good: ‘I can’t, gasp, believe what they just played!’ It was just instan­ta­neous; it was crazy.

“Smells Like Teen Spir­it” was unre­con­sti­tut­ed rock bliss to us…

…and per­haps not the most nat­ur­al fit for a ukulele cov­er?

On the oth­er hand, what bet­ter instru­ment for those “ambiva­lent about con­ven­tion­al suc­cess” than the ukulele?

The Ukelele Orches­tra of Great Britain’s cov­er is as inten­tion­al­ly sil­ly as the band itself, but also man­ages to con­vey some of the original’s DGAF atti­tude.

That’s quite an accom­plish­ment for a seat­ed row of for­mal­ly dressed, mid­dle aged musi­cians, strum­ming in uni­son on an instru­ment any­one can play… but few can play well.

The ukulele has become cool in cer­tain cir­cles, but remains inex­tri­ca­bly linked to Tiny Tim tip­toe­ing through the tulips, and a mil­lion fum­bling sum­mer camp recre­ations of Jake Shimabukuro’s gen­tle Hawai­ian “Some­where Over the Rain­bow.”

Orches­tra founder Peter Brooke Turn­er’s trib­ute to lead vocal­ist Kurt Cobain helps nudge the nee­dle  past pure nov­el­ty into the realm of cred­i­bil­i­ty, or at least a sophis­ti­cat­ed under­stand­ing of all the ways in which the orig­i­nal works.

Plus, his “yeah” at 1:52 tran­scends the era of flan­nels, harken­ing to a time when the uncon­flict­ed preen­ing rock god reigned supreme. (We should note that he serves plen­ty of ham along­side that sausage.)

Best of all is David Suich’s enthu­si­as­tic head­bang­ing. Clear­ly a fel­low who enjoys putting his long hair in ser­vice of his art! (We refer you to the Ukulele Orchestra’s inter­pre­ta­tion of AC/DC’s “High­way to Hell.” below…)

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The First Live Per­for­mance of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” (1991)

Seri­ous­ly Awe­some Ukulele Cov­ers of “Sul­tans of Swing,” “Sweet Child O’ Mine,” “Thun­der­struck,” and “Smells Like Teen Spir­it”

How Nirvana’s Icon­ic “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” Came to Be: An Ani­mat­ed Video Nar­rat­ed by T‑Bone Bur­nett Tells the True Sto­ry

1,000 Musi­cians Play Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” Live, at the Same Time

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour Composes a Soundtrack to Arthur C. Clarke’s Documentary Fractals: The Colors of Infinity

in Math, Music | May 13th, 2021

An observ­er once called the Man­del­brot Set “The Thumbprint of God,” the sim­ple equa­tion that led to the dis­cov­ery of frac­tal geog­ra­phy, chaos the­o­ry, and why games like No Man’s Sky even exist. In 1994, Arthur C. Clarke, writer of both sci­ence fic­tion and sci­ence fact, nar­rat­ed a one-hour doc­u­men­tary on the new math­e­mat­ics, called Frac­tals: The Col­ors of Infin­i­ty. If that sounds famil­iar, dear read­er, it’s because we’ve told you about it long ago. But it’s worth revis­it­ing, and it’s worth men­tion­ing that the sound­track was cre­at­ed by Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour.

To be hon­est, at first I wasn’t real­ly hear­ing that Floyd vibe, just some pleas­ant synth-strings you could find on any num­ber of doc­u­men­taries. But then Clarke explains the impli­ca­tion of the Man­del­brot equa­tion, end­ing it with “This real­ly is infin­i­ty.” And then Boom, the acid hit.

Or rather, the rain­bow com­put­er graph­ics of the end­less zoom hit, and it was unmis­tak­ably Gilmour—cue up 5:19 and be care­ful with that frac­tal, Eugene. This hap­pens again at 14:30, 25:12, 31:07, 35:46, 38:22, 43:22, 44:51, and 50:06 for those with an itchy scrub­bing fin­ger. But stick around for the whole doc, as the his­to­ry of how we got to the equa­tion, its prece­dents in nature and art, and the impli­ca­tions only hint­ed at in the pro­gram, all make for inter­est­ing view­ing.

The music will remind you in places of “Shine On Your Crazy Dia­mond”, “Obscured by Clouds,” and “On the Run.” When a DVD was released years lat­er, a spe­cial fea­ture iso­lat­ed just Gilmour’s music and the frac­tal ani­ma­tion.

Gilmour has con­tributed sound­track work to oth­er pro­grams. He has an uncred­it­ed per­for­mance on Guy Pratt’s sound­track from 1995’s Hack­ers; inci­den­tal music for 1992’s Ruby Takes a Trip with Ruby Wax; and a 1993 doc­u­men­tary on the arts and drug use called The Art of Trip­ping.

There are no offi­cial releas­es of this sound­track work, but one user has put up 16 min­utes of the Colours of Infin­i­ty music over at Sound­Cloud.

 

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Gilmour, David Cros­by & Gra­ham Nash Per­form the Pink Floyd Clas­sic, “Shine on You Crazy Dia­mond” (2006)

Watch David Gilmour Play the Songs of Syd Bar­rett, with the Help of David Bowie & Richard Wright

Arthur C. Clarke Pre­dicts the Future in 1964 … And Kind of Nails It

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

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David Lynch Directs a New Music Video for Donovan

in Film, Music | May 12th, 2021

I often feel Scot­tish singer-song­writer Dono­van has been mis­un­der­stood. When he shows up these days, it’s in songs like his creepy “Hur­dy Gur­dy Man” and “Sea­son of the Witch,” in films and TV series about ser­i­al killers. This may leave younger view­ers with the impres­sion that the psy­che­del­ic folk hero went down some scary musi­cal paths. But those who remem­ber Dono­van in his hey­day remem­ber him as the singer of “Sun­shine Super­man,” his biggest hit, and “Mel­low Yel­low,” which hit Num­ber 2 in the U.S. in 1966. The fol­low­ing year, he urged his lis­ten­ers to wear their love like heav­en, in vers­es that rivaled Syd Barrett’s for their love of col­or: “Col­or in sky, Pruss­ian blue / Scar­let fleece changes hue.”

Maybe it’s hard to enter­tain the sen­ti­ments of flower pow­er in 2021. But maybe, also, Donovan’s sun­ni­est songs have always had dark­er threads woven through them. Take “Sun­shine Super­man”: kind of a creepy tune, with its Lou Reed-like obser­va­tion about “hus­tlin’ just to have a lit­tle scene,” and its hip­pie lothar­i­o’s con­fes­sion that he’ll use “any trick in the book” on the object of his desire. Maybe it was ear­ly fans who got him wrong. Dono­van has always been a weirdo’s weirdo, if you will. And so, it stands to rea­son that he would pick David Lynch to pro­duce his track, “I Am the Shaman,” and to direct a video for the song for his 75th birth­day this past Mon­day.

The song itself is not new, but was pro­duced by Lynch in 2010 for the album, Rit­u­al Groove, a col­lec­tion of record­ings, “some dat­ing as far back as 1976,” writes one review­er, held togeth­er by the “premise… that the plan­et is stuffed, the God­dess won’t care if we drift off into obliv­ion but wait, a sav­iour appears in the form of the pre­vi­ous­ly hum­ble min­strel Dono­van, now a true poet.” (If fans of the cult psy­che­del­ic hor­ror film Mandy are remind­ed of Jere­mi­ah Sand, then we are in grim ter­ri­to­ry, indeed.) The col­lab­o­ra­tion gets even more inter­est­ing when we learn that “I Am the Shaman” was large­ly impro­vised, as Dono­van him­self wrote on Face­book:

He had asked me to only bring in a song just emerg­ing, not any­where near fin­ished. We would see what hap­pens. It hap­pened! I com­posed extem­pore… the vers­es came nat­u­ral­ly. New chord pat­terns effort­less­ly appeared.

This way of work­ing suit­ed him per­fect­ly, as did the back­wards-talk­ing pro­duc­tion Lynch applied to the track. “David and I are ‘com­padres’ on a cre­ative path rarely trav­eled,” he not­ed. It is a path that leads straight through the wilds of Tran­scen­den­tal Med­i­ta­tion, for which the video is intend­ed to raise mon­ey and aware­ness. Despite its lack of col­or, anoth­er affin­i­ty shared by Dono­van Leitch and David Lynch, “I Am the Shaman” shows both artists vibrat­ing at the same fre­quen­cy, which may either con­firm or unset­tle what you thought you knew about the mys­ti­cal poet/singer/shaman Dono­van.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Lynch Posts His Night­mar­ish Sit­com Rab­bits Online–the Show That Psy­chol­o­gists Use to Induce a Sense of Exis­ten­tial Cri­sis in Research Sub­jects

David Lynch Being a Mad­man for a Relent­less 8 Min­utes and 30 Sec­onds

Meet the Hur­dy Gur­dy, the Hand-Cranked Medieval Instru­ment with 80 Mov­ing Parts

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Pink Floyd’s First Masterpiece: An Audio/Video Exploration of the 23-Minute Track, “Echoes” (1971)

in Music | May 11th, 2021

Of the many things that can and have been said of Pink Floyd’s 1973 mas­ter­piece, The Dark Side of the Moon, one con­sis­tent­ly bears repeat­ing: it set a stan­dard for how a rock album could func­tion as a seam­less, uni­fied whole. There have been few releas­es since that meet this stan­dard. Even Floyd them­selves didn’t seem like they could mea­sure up to Dark Side’s matu­ri­ty just a few years ear­li­er. But they were well on their way with 1971’s Med­dle.

“Med­dle is real­ly the album where all four of us were find­ing our feet,” said David Gilmour. The obser­va­tion espe­cial­ly applied to the 23-minute odyssey “Echoes,” the “mas­ter­work of the album — the one where we were all dis­cov­er­ing what Pink Floyd was all about.” All four mem­bers of the band learned to com­pose togeth­er in the rehearsal room, Nick Mason recalled, “just sit­ting there think­ing, play­ing… It’s a nice way to work — and, I think, in a way, the most ‘Floyd-ian’ mate­r­i­al we ever did came about that way.”

“Echoes,” indeed, was the band’s “first mas­ter­piece,” argues Noah Lefevre in the Poly­phon­ic “audio/visual com­pan­ion” above. The song was orig­i­nal­ly titled “The Return of the Son of Noth­ing” because the band had gone into the stu­dio with “noth­ing pre­pared,” Nick Mason remem­bered lat­er that year. As they strug­gled to find their way for­ward after the exper­i­ments of Ummagum­ma and Atom Heart Moth­er, tour­ing con­stant­ly, they felt unin­spired, call­ing all their ideas “noth­ings.” They expect­ed lit­tle from inspi­ra­tions like the “ping” sound that opens “Echoes.”

Instead, they cre­at­ed the most sub­stan­tial mate­r­i­al of their career to date. Inspired by Muham­mad Iqbal’s poem “Two Plan­ets,” Roger Waters “wrote lyrics to an epic piece” about being at sea, in every sense, yet glimps­ing the poten­tial for res­cue and con­nec­tion. Richard Wright wrote “the whole piano thing at the begin­ning and the chord struc­ture for the song,” he told Mojo in his final inter­view, show­cas­ing his seri­ous com­po­si­tion­al tal­ents. And the range of tones, effects, and styles that Gilmour pio­neered on “Echoes” have become leg­endary among gui­tarists and Floyd fans.

“Echoes,” says Lefevre above, changed the band’s direc­tion lyri­cal­ly and musi­cal­ly, help­ing them break out of the crit­i­cal box labeled “space rock.” Instead of  “anoth­er song about look­ing upwards to the stars, Waters looked down into the cold, strange depths of the ocean.” It wasn’t the first time rock and roll had vis­it­ed what Lefevre calls the “psy­che­del­ic under­wa­ter.” Hen­drix was there three years ear­li­er when he turned into a mer­man. But Floyd found some­thing entire­ly their own in their explo­ration. Learn how they did it in the styl­ish video above, clev­er­ly synced to the whole of “Echoes.”

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Watch the Last, Tran­scen­dent Per­for­mance of “Echoes” by Pink Floyd Key­boardist Richard Wright & David Gilmour (2006)

Pink Floyd’s “Echoes” Pro­vides a Sound­track for the Final Scene of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey

Watch Pink Floyd Play Live Amidst the Ruins of Pom­peii in 1971 … and David Gilmour Does It Again in 2016

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The History of the Guitar: See the Evolution of the Guitar in 7 Instruments

in History, Music | May 11th, 2021

A thor­ough­ly mod­ern instru­ment with an ancient her­itage, the gui­tar dates back some 500-plus years. If we take into account sim­i­lar stringed instru­ments with sim­i­lar designs, we can push that date back a few thou­sand years, but there is some schol­ar­ly dis­agree­ment over when the gui­tar emerged as an instru­ment dis­tinct from the lute. In any case, stringed instru­ment his­to­ri­an Bran­don Ack­er is here to walk us through some of the sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ences, with “sev­en check­points along the way of the his­to­ry of the gui­tar,” he says above in a guest vis­it to Rob Scallon’s YouTube chan­nel.

The gui­tar is part of the lute fam­i­ly, which dates back some “5,000 years ago, in Mesopotamia.” Sim­i­lar instru­ments exist­ed all over the ancient world. Which of these even­tu­al­ly becomes the gui­tar? That is a ques­tion, says Ack­er, for anoth­er day, but the first instru­ment actu­al­ly iden­ti­fied as a gui­tar dates from around 1500. Ack­er doesn’t toe a strict musi­co­log­i­cal line and begins with an oud from around 700 CE, the bowl-like stringed instru­ment still played today in Turkey, the Mid­dle East, and North Africa. Like near­ly all gui­tar pre­cur­sors, the oud has strings that run in cours­es, mean­ing they are dou­bled up in pitch as in a man­dolin.

Strings would have been made of gut — sheep intestines, to be exact — not met­al or nylon. The larg­er oud is not much dif­fer­ent in shape and con­struc­tion from the Renais­sance lute, which Ack­er demon­strates next, show­ing how polypho­ny led to the advent of fin­ger­pick­ing. (He plays a bit of Eng­lish com­pos­er John Dowland’s “Flow My Tears” as an exam­ple.) We’re a long way from coun­try and blues, but maybe not as far you might think. The lute was ide­al both for solo accom­pa­ni­ment as an ensem­ble instru­ment in bands and helped ush­er in the era of sec­u­lar song.

The lute set the course for oth­er instru­ments to fol­low, such as the Renais­sance gui­tar, the first instru­ment in the tour that resem­bles a mod­ern guitar’s hour­glass shape and straight head­stock. Tuned like a ukulele (it is, in fact, the ori­gin of ukulele tun­ing), the Renais­sance gui­tars of Spain and Por­tu­gal also came in dif­fer­ent sizes like the Poly­ne­sian ver­sion. A ver­sa­tile instru­ment, it worked equal­ly well for strum­ming easy chords or play­ing com­plex, fin­ger­picked melodies, sort of like… well, the mod­ern gui­tar. Through a few changes in tun­ing, size, and num­ber of strings, it doesn’t take us long to get there.

The gui­tar is so sim­ple in con­struc­tion it can be built with house­hold items, and so old its ances­tors pre­date most of the instru­ments in the orches­tra. But it also rev­o­lu­tion­ized mod­ern music and remains one of the pri­ma­ry com­po­si­tion­al tools of singers and song­writ­ers every­where. Ever since Les Paul elec­tri­fied the gui­tar, high-tech exper­i­men­tal designs pop up every few years, incor­po­rat­ing all kinds of keys, dials, but­tons, and extra cir­cuit­ry. But the instru­ments that stick around are still the most tra­di­tion­al­ly styled and eas­i­est to learn and play. Acker’s sur­vey of its his­to­ry above gives us a bet­ter under­stand­ing of the instru­men­t’s stay­ing pow­er.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Kei­th Richards Demon­strates His Famous 5‑String Tech­nique (Used on Clas­sic Stones Songs Like “Start Me Up,” “Honky Tonk Women” & More)

What Gui­tars Were Like 400 Years Ago: An Intro­duc­tion to the 9 String Baroque Gui­tar

The His­to­ry of the Gui­tar & Gui­tar Leg­ends: From 1929 to 1979

The His­to­ry of Rock Mapped Out on the Cir­cuit Board of a Gui­tar Ampli­fi­er: 1400 Musi­cians, Song­writ­ers & Pro­duc­ers

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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